There’s a lot that I liked about this book, so in true form for me I’m going to start with two things I really didn’t like. First, you get one subtitle, max. Zero is preferable, and two or more is asinine. Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution reeks of trying to have it not just both ways, but all ways. Pick a title and stick to it. Babel would have worked just fine on its own.
Secondly, this book was growing steadily in my admiration until about the 100 pages to go mark. At that point, Kuang’s carefully considered characterizations and slow-burn plotting were jettisoned in favor of polemics. Kuang, for some reason, begins to doubt that the reader is truly understanding her point, and so she begins to have characters directly state their beliefs to one another, speaking less like human beings are more like mouthpieces. It’s a disappointing misstep for such an absurdly talented author.
Let’s get to that talent. Babel is a wonder of sustained imagination. A wholly original idea that will leave the reader breathless is paired with what must have been copious amounts of research and years of work refining the work. Kuang’s narrative follows a young Cantonese boy eventually re-christened Robin Swift. After his family dies during a cholera outbreak, Swift finds himself unexpectedly saved by a benefactor he never knew existed: an Oxford don specializing in Asiatic languages. Professor Lovell wants to take Robin with him to England to be educated in language and trained as a translator.
Babel is set in a slightly-alternate version of our own timeline’s 1830s. In Kuang’s hands, England is a colonial powerhouse largely due to its control over the world’s silver market and the wondrous things translators like Professor Lovell have been able to make that silver do. When inscribed with an English word and it’s translation in a foreign tongue, silver bars become imbued with magical powers. Silver powers England’s railways and ships, making them faster and safer. Silver also enhances England’s military might by making their weapons deadlier.
After Robin starts at Oxford, he quickly befriends his fellow “babblers” as they are derisively called by other students. Unusually for the place and time, they are a diverse group, consisting of Robin, Ramy from Calcutta, Victoire from Haiti, and the group sole English citizen, Leticia, daughter of a powerful admiral who resents her for becoming an educated woman. Together they study many languages, with the goal of becoming capable of making new translations to unlock even more of silver’s magical powers.
There’s just one hitch. After being approached by a former student with a personal connection, Robin begins to realize that he and his fellow students are being exploited, much in the same way England exploits their home countries. While Robin’s professors may speak glowingly of the nobility of their work, in actuality the translators are working toward enabling the expansion of the British empire, the oppression of native populations in England’s colonies, and the suppression of the working class within England. This begins to give Robin and his friends doubt about the wisdom of continuing their studies.
Once Robin and his friends decide to do something about their work being twisted into something grotesque, the story becomes an odd mishmash or fantasy novel and war movie. The action gets quite frenetic and the bodies start piling up. It’s a lot, and sometimes too much, frankly. But nothing can overwhelm the incredible job Kuang does building up the world of Babel.